5 Times Mill Bulstrode Came Out
by disamphigory
Summary: "I'm a boy, Pansy. Like in my head and everything. A boy. Like Greg or Draco." Mill thinks this over for a few seconds. "Okay maybe not a boy like Draco. I'm...sturdier."


A/N This is a story about being transsexual. If, after reading this story, you are interested in this subject, I encourage you to learn more about this misunderstood minority group. However, this is just one fictional character's process of transitioning and how he feels about many of the complex issues surrounding gender and sex, and does not presume to portray the entire transsexual (or anything under the umbrella of Trans*) experience. But it might be a good starting point to thinking about these issues.

5 Times Mill Bulstrode Came Out

Mill isn't really friends with Pansy until she calls him a lesbian and gives him a haircut to make up for it.

When they come back for their Second-Seventh-Year, the ten of them are shown to one of the newly refurbished towers and told to work out for themselves their roommates. Mill ends up with Pansy because Granger, the informal leader of their ragtag group of returning adult-students, has organized everyone while Mill is checking out Draco's ass surreptitiously in the window reflection. Mill knows he would never have a chance with Draco, even if they both _are _poofters. Everyone knows that Draco is into guys and likes _delicate _boys, and Mill is anything but delicate and doesn't look like a guy, no matter what he thinks in his head.

Mill levitates his trunk across the Eighth-Year common room-no house elves for them, apparently-and into the room he and Pansy are to share. It's smaller than the dungeon dorm they'd shared in Slytherin, but far brighter. He floats his trunk over to the bed closest to the window and begins to unpack.

Pansy enters a few minutes after, smelling like the 60 galleon-an-ounce perfume she routinely steals from her mother. Mill continues unpacking until he's hit in the head with a magazine. He picks it up and raises his eyebrows. _Someone_ went Muggle-slumming this summer.

"It's called _Vogue_ and I can't _believe_ I didn't know about this before." Pansy says, snatching it back and lounging on Mill's bed. "Muggles are so brilliant!" She flips to a page with a fold-over section and shoves it in Mill's face. "_Look!_ They put perfume in the magazine so you can try it before you buy!"

Mill thinks that the second war could have ended a lot less bloodily if rich witches knew about perfume samples and _Vogue_. Pansy grabs him by his tie and hauls him to sit next to her. She flips to near the end of the 2-inch thick magazine and points to an article about haircuts.

"Look at how many ways they've come up with to do their hair without spells!"

Mill dutifully observes the glossy pictures of starved-looking models with hair in all sorts of different cuts and fixates on a handsome woman with ruddy cheeks and hair about three inches long. Somehow the woman looks sharper with her hair mostly gone, fiercer. Mill, the unwanted girl-heir of a dying Pureblood line, understands about wanting to look fierce. He fingers his shoulder-length mousy hair absently.

Pansy pokes him with her wand, then gestures to the picture. "You like that one? I thought of you when I saw it."

Mill lays his calloused fingers carefully on the woman's hair and nods.

"Great!" Pansy says and clambers to her knees behind him, holding her wand perilously close to his scalp. "It's _such_ a great cut for the lesbo look, and I thought that since we're all back for this year and if Draco can be as poofy as he wants now his family's all pious and paying war reparations, then you can dyke it up a little bit, yeah?"

_Lesbian_. Was that what people called him? Mill can't help it; he giggles and not in a manly way at all.

Pansy's wand falls and the bed shakes a bit as she settles back on her heels. "You _are_ a lesbian, right?" she asks hesitantly and Mill feels bad for laughing at her. Lots of people have laughed at Pansy over the years and Mill always has prided himself on not being one of them. "Because I thought with the, er, skirt burning incident in 4th year and what with borrowing Greg's clothes and, er, not having a boyfriend-"

"M'not a lesbian, Pans," he says, quietly.

"Oh." Pansy says, "Well." She looks back down at the magazine. "You like boys, then? Then why do you want _this_ haircut? You have, er, very pretty hair _now_." Her long nails tentatively touch his scalp and Mill shivers and moves away from her, drawing thick legs up to his chest as far as he can. The magazine falls to the floor.

"M'not straight, either, Pans." Mill says and it feels like a thousand flobberworms are fucking in his stomach. Pansy looks confused, which is prettier than her usual pinched expression. Mill continues before she can be wrong again. "M'a boy, Pans. Sort of. Inside, at least."

Pansy still looks confused. "But you're a girl, Mill. Millicent Bulstrode, Lady of the House Bulstrode. Right?"

"No. They told me I was girl when I was born and when I was a kid and...I just went along with it. But the war's over and Mum's dead and," Mill chooses not to go down this line of thought. "I'm a boy, Pans. Like in my head and everything. A boy. Like Greg or Draco." Mill thinks this over for a few seconds. "Okay maybe not a boy like Draco. I'm...sturdier."

There is a long silence and Pansy's nails come to a halt on Mill's scalp.

"Soooo," Pansy starts in her I-am-supportive-damnit voice, thickened with confusion, "So you're like, a boy on the inside? And a girl everywhere else?"

Mill nods.

"Do you have a cock?" Pansy asks, and Mill realizes that either Pansy's foray into the Muggle world has not introduced her to the idea of tact or Pansy's mother never had the little-witches-and-wizards talk with her.

"No, Pans, I don't have a cock, yet." Merlin, even that _sentence_ sounded weird.

"Oh," she says, then ventures, "But, but, you want one?"

Mill nods again, and curls up a little tighter, much like the periwinkles he'd hum to at Brighton on holidays before Hogwarts, before everything went to shit.

Pansy's hand drops from Mill's head and she shifts away towards the pillows. Mill thinks about whether it's too late to set up a tent on the grounds instead of living in the tower with Pansy. Granger supposedly knows a lot about tents. He could go in for a Moroccan-inspired design, all geometric tiles and crumpled linen. The view of the bedspread wavers and Mill gets pissed at the idea that boys don't cry, because obviously he _is_, right now. Fuck.

He looks up when the bed shifts again. Pansy picks up the magazine from the floor and bends down to look him in the eyes. She rustles the magazine loudly and says briskly. "Well, I don't know what I can do about the cock situation, but I am bloody good at hair, so let's start with that."

Mill thinks divination and looking for signs is for Puffapod-loving Hufflepuffs, but maybe this brighter room portends a better year. At least with Pansy. He turns obediently and grins as Pansy's cushy boobs press into his back and his hair begins to fall around him in a circle.

After ten minutes and most of Mill's hair is all over the bedspread, Pansy leans over him. She is very squishy and smells sweet and then she pokes him in the breast with her wand. Mill jumps and the bed bounces. "What the fuck?" he blurts and Pansy continues to prod his breasts experimentally.

"I can fix these, too, if you want." Pansy says in a nervous voice.

"What?" Mill repeats and pushes Pansy's wand away from him.

"I _can_," Pansy says pugnaciously, moving back to continue snipping his hair. "It's not like I don't have experience playing with boob sizes. You know that. _Everyone_ knows that. And it's _much_ easier to take away than to add."

Mill feels a rush of both excitement and abject terror at the competing ideas of getting rid of his breasts and allowing Pansy, who failed her Transfigurations OWL, near his body with a wand. "Er, Pans?" he squeaks, "Maybe I could, er, ask Madam Pomfrey? Not that I don't appreciate it or anything, I just..."

"So you're going all in on this, then?" Pansy asks, lightly. Pansy had talked about You-Know-Who in the same tone, back in fifth year, before it all went sideways. "If you ask the Madam it'll get around, you know."

Mill straightens his posture. "Anything is better than last year. Anything."

A pause. "Yes," Pansy agrees softly, and more hair falls to the bedspread.

Mill watches Pansy spend their third year try to simultaneously starve herself and give herself ginormous tits, both with magic. She watches Draco spend their sixth year with blue rings under his eyes as absently organizes his peas into battalions on his plate before leaving without eating them. Blaise clams up even more their fifth year after his mother's sixth husband went the way of the others, doling out words with rigid asperity.

Slytherin is kind of fucked up, really. All the little broken toys trying to exert some control in their fucked up playpen.

Mill's situation at home isn't nearly as big a mess as the others'. Sure, there are the uncles in Azkaban, but that's practically a rite of passage in Slytherin these days. Her parents are fine, if distant, and she doesn't have any siblings to contend with.

But the year Pansy won't/can't/shouldn't eat, Mill wakes up one day betrayed by her body. His body. Her body. Oh, fuck it. There's blood and a pain that spreads and she can't ask Pansy for help or a prefect or, Merlin forbid, Snape, because she just _doesn't talk about those things_. Even to herself.

She drags herself to Madam Pomfrey, learns the period-away spell she forgot from last year's "girls only" talk. She had watched the Hufflepuff Quidditch team practice out of the windows instead, thinking about being embraced by Diggory. Folly.

Then she heads to the library to figure out if she's weird, normal, or totally fucked up in the head.

She's not normal, but she's not completely messed up, she finds out. You can be more than one sex, she/he can have more than one pronoun until you pick one, or for always. There were others like her/him. Whispers of them, at least. She/He sits near the transfiguration section and regrets slacking off so much in McGonagall's class. Human transfiguration isn't until sixth year and there's no way she/he would ask for help when she/he is a perfectly decent witch herself. Himself. Wizard. Fuck.

The cramps return and Mill curls up at her/his desk and whispers every swear word her/his cousin Marcus ever taught her/him, sitting like two boulders by the creek behind the Bulstrode manor. "Fuck. Bloody. Damn. Damn. Damn. Fuck. Er..."

"Cunt?" Mill jumps up from her/his seat and turns to find one of the most unexpected people ever to say that word behind her.

"Granger. What the hell are you doing here?" Mill asks, lowering her/his voice in anger.

Granger gestures to her overstuffed monstrosity of a rucksack and arches an eyebrow. Swot.

Mill starts to frown and then winces when a particularly strong cramp hits her/him in the hip, sharp and aching like running into a table corner at night. She/he watches cautiously as Granger sets her bag down with a heartfelt sigh and start to rummage in its contents. Mad mud-Muggleborn.

Granger resurfaces moments later with a small white bottle, flicks the top open, and stretches a palm out with two small red objects on it. Mill takes this as another sign that Granger is bonkers.

"Here," she says, moving the hand with the objects closer, "It's for period pain. It'll make the cramps go away."

"Period." Mill repeats, asking and not asking what the fuck Granger is talking about.

Granger looks uncertain. "Er, yes. Period? Menstruation? The Painters? That's your problem, right? Bleeding, er, down there? And pain in your uterus?"

Oh. The bleeding. Mill wonders why there are so many names for such an awful thing, then remembers how many different names she/he has needed to memorize for Professor Lupin's classes on monsters. The worse it is, the more names it has, unless it's You-Know-Who, who was just so awful as to not have any name at all.

"Yeah. What about them?" Mill asks defensively, looking down at the objects.

"Well, they suck, don't they?" Granger replies bluntly.

"You've got quite a filthy mouth, there, Granger," Mill observes.

Granger flushes but carries on, "From what I heard walking over, so do you, so shush." Mill glowers at her. "_Anyway_, these are Muggle pills to help with the pains. The potions I've tried don't really work very well but my mum swears by these." She waggles her outstretched hand again and Mill snatches up the pills before anyone can see Granger imitating a Muggle mime.

"Muggle?" She/He asks suspiciously.

Granger draws herself up for what Mill is sure to be another swotty speech. "_Yes_, and that doesn't make them inferior or worse and if you're not going to take them then you can just-"

Granger falters as Mill pops them in his/her mouth and swallows them dry. Granger gapes.

"How...you're not supposed to swallow them without water!" Granger whines.

Mill uncurls a bit. "Our cook sucks at making peas. You learn to deal."

Mill watches as Granger mouths "_Cook?_" and recovers her composure, leaning down to grab her bag. Mill places her/his foot on it and Granger glares up at her/him.

She/He means to make a cutting remark, as is expected of a Slytherin suddenly in debt to a Gryffindor, but instead finds her/himself saying, "You do the Arithmancy homework yet, Granger?"

Granger blinks and slowly slides into the chair opposite Mill. "No...?"

Mill shoves some scrolls aside-charms work she/he will probably forget to do anyway-and unrolls a fresh parchment. "Good," she/he says, "We can help each other."

At Granger's dubious expression, Mill draws back. "Unless you think I'm too stupid."

A pause.

"I'm not, you know. Stupid. Big doesn't mean stupid."

"I. I know." Granger answers, and fishes a fresh parchment out of her bag. They work for about half an hour, occasionally asking questions of the other. Mill can sense the exact moment when Granger actually realizes that Mill is not, in fact, stupid.

"You know," Granger begins nervously and Mill wonders, not for the first time, if Gryffindors are allergic to silence, "in the Muggle world, they say girls can't do maths well. That we're defective at it or something." Mill's disgust must be showing because Granger hurries on, "But that's a load of tosh, really. You're really good at Arithmancy! And so am I. Girls can be just as good, right?"

Mill, who is having the worst day ever in terms of her/his approaching womanhood, is in pain, and grumpy, mutters the first thing that comes to mind. "I'm _not_ a girl."

"What?" Granger asks intelligently.

Her/His father always taught her/him to commit to everything she/he says. No mistakes, no apologies, no regrets. Also, if Mill doesn't say _something_ about this, she/he might explode. Mill repeats, still softly, "I'm not a girl. Not really. Don't feel like it, you know, inside."

"What are you, then? An owl?" Granger laughs.

"No. Fuck you, Granger. A boy."

There is a very long silence in which Mill finishes up another problem in the assignment and the numbers come out all perfect and rational. If all the solutions are this elegant, Arithmancy might be Mill's new favorite subject and Granger still isn't saying anything. She hasn't left, though.

"So are you like, a tranny or something?" Granger asks baldly.

Mill shrugs, not sure if she/he should be offended, looking at the next problem. "More a boy, I guess. Haven't thought about it much yet. Today really sucks, at least."

"Oh."

Yes. _Oh_.

Mill looks up to gauge how long it will be before Granger runs screaming from the table and sees something worse-pity. She/He sits up and crosses her/his arms over her/his chest and frowns. "If you're just going to sit there and pity me, Mudblood, you can get the bloody fuck out of here." She/He looks down at the unfinished Arithmancy assignment and thinks very hard about not crying. It's just _Granger_, after all.

Just Granger who has not left, has wiped the pity from her face, and is, in fact, leaning back over her parchment with a quill gripped in a white-knuckled hand. Hesitantly, Mill returns to her/his assignment.

They solve a few more problems in taut silence, the only sounds nibs brushing against parchment and the whispers of other students in the stacks.

"My aunt-my dad's brother's wife-used to be a man, you know," Granger offers, an olive branch that Mill does not want to accept. She/He wants to work on Arithmancy, because right now she/he can't think about the rest of her/his life, full of periods and pitying faces. These numbers are something she/he can control today, when everything else is going to shit.

"We're not talking about this, Granger."

"But I-"

"Not. Talking. About. This. Granger." Mill punctuates her/his point by splattering the top of Granger's assignment with ink.

"Okay! Okay. No talking. _Sorry_." Granger shuts up, but doesn't leave.

The Muggle pills seem to be working, because Mill can't feel her/his cramps anymore.

God Bless Draco Malfoy's insatiable cock. God Bless it.

Mill thinks these charitable thoughts once a day, right before his shower and right after his breasts resurface like new islands in the sea, forming from so much hot lava. His daily potion goes down ugly every time. Granger says that they are working on making it taste like oranges, but Mill doesn't hold out hope. The acrid taste of the potion is his reminder, like burnt fingers on a hot stove, that he should be grateful for this. Grateful for no surgeries or injections or the fear of not-passing, as the muggles like him must do.

Malfoy's cock isn't the proximate or even the ultimate reason that Mill gets to drink himself into a man everyday, feeling sometimes like Ernest Hemingway and sometimes like a vampire, a liquid shot at feeling whole. But Malfoy's cock _did_ lead Draco to Muggles, gay ones at least, and fucking a pre-med student led him to genetics. Trying and failing to get in Potter's gay trousers (and who didn't see _that_ coming, Mill thought viciously at the time) led him to having productive conversations with Granger, who was then finishing up a time-turner-aided degree in both Muggle Genetics and potions.

This led them to experimenting with the polyjuice potion together on weekends and Mill's early-20s predicament of still presenting as a girl gave them a joint purpose. So each day Mill swallows 24-hours of himself: mostly potion sludge augmented by a clear dollop of magically-doctored DNA. Exchange X for Y and get Mill, not Millicent.

The two of them are making a killing in the kinky sex market. "Trade places!" the ads cry, and Mill always feels somehow cheapened. Becoming the man he has always been has never been about sex for him. You'd think that the feeling of going balls-deep into an attractive young guy would be great for him, but there are some aspects of being Mill-not-Millicent that are greater than the sum of his dick and harder to understand. Mill bottoms most of the time, loves his new prostate like he never loved his clit, but sometimes asks his partners if he could put on a skirt for a bit of titillation. There's an element of "being a girl" that sometimes-not always, mind-heightens the whole experience.

Such are the unexpected vagaries of kinks. Mill has come to accept his as something separate from his gender. It could be worse. He could be into scat, and there are some things even the wizarding world doesn't accept readily.

He fucks Muggles, mostly. Foreigners almost always. There's a refreshing anonymity in fucking queers-on-the-go. They aren't there for very long and there are no expectations of Mill to ring them up sometime later. This is good, because Mill is still scared of his mobile, which has so few buttons but does so many things.

Tonight's boy is shorter than Mill and the tousled blond mop he is sporting is probably not his real hair colour. He is also a wizard, which initially gives Mill pause, but Mill has a thing for calloused hands and adrenaline and this man went to school on the Continent and is fresh off the Welsh Green Dragon Preserve. Still kinda smells like it, too, but Mill isn't picky.

The sex is, net worth, decent. The guy, Drew, is a fucking genius with his mouth and at least enthusiastic if a bit fumbling in the latter half of the evening. No complaints here. They fall asleep in Drew's hotel room, a sagging mattress and pay-by-the-hour rates. Mill can hear the birds outside start up for the day just in time for dawn. Mill casts an alarm spell and worms his way into his favorite part of the night, curling around Drew's back and smoothing his hand up and down Drew's side in the broad strokes of a confident painter.

Mill wakes up just before his alarm rings and shakes the wand vigorously as the first few notes of "Walks Like a Man" plays. Never, ever, loan your wand to Pansy. In his sleep, Drew has twined himself around Mill and drooled on his chest, so Mill extricates himself carefully and wipes his chest on the coverlet before padding, naked, to his abandoned jeans. He rummages through the never-ending pockets—thank you Merlin for Hermione Granger—and comes up with his weekly vial pack. Almost time to visit Draco again; he's down to only 7 doses.

He knows he's lucky, not having to pay for the potion. Boomslang skin is rarer than ever these days. His potion is priced a cool 40 galleons a month retail that many witches-who-would-be-wizards and their counterparts do not have. When Mill's accounts recover from the dip his Muggle bonds took back in '08, he plans on setting up a fund to help others out.

Slipping into the tiny bathroom, Mill peers into the gritty mirror and contemplates his face, which is becoming familiar as the months go on. His jaw is wider, brow more sloped, and when he swallows his Adam's apple bobs up and down, foreign and welcome. He still has spots, which is ridiculous now that he's in his 20s, and there is that fucking mole which Pansy insists makes him look like a young Ewan McGregor but today has a _hair_ growing in it. Ugh. Mill may be a guy, but he has some bloody _standards_.

He transfigures the soap holder into a pair of tweezers and begins to chase errant hairs off his face while he waits to transform back into his birth-body. Granger and Draco had discovered in their early trials that you couldn't just stack the potion and never transform back. The fluxweed had some toxins which built up in the digestive system. Mill, their on-hand guinea pig, had discovered the hard way that the potions-disaster wing in St. Mungos had 309 black tiles compared to 7,586 white tiles on the ceiling while waiting for his liver to clear.

The bathroom door creaks open and hits Mill in the ass just as that ass is increasing in size and Mill's dick shrinks back into his abdomen. Draco had watched the process the first time and then upchucked all over the lab. Mill grabs the door and tries to shut it—one-night stands do not have to be confused about who they fucked anymore than not remembering their names—but he is too late.

Drew steps in, wearing boxers with animated dragons and clutching something in his hand. He halts, blearily panicked, and Mill ponders how well the conversation will go this time.

"Who the fuck are you?" Drew asks, stepping backward.

Mill sighs inwardly. "It's me. Mill. The person you slept with last night."

Mill is quite sick of these silences, thanks. He is also not happy with his girl-voice, which he has not heard in a long time.

"But you're not a bloke." Drew says and reaches his free hand up to wipe the rheum out of his eyes. "I don't do birds, babe. Even stacked ones."

Mill feels very naked and divorces himself again from his breasts. Drew isn't looking at _Mill_ naked; he's looking at Mill in some chick's body.

"I know. I wasn't a, er, _bird, _last night." Mill holds up his potion and hopes that for once the wide-spread popularity of the potion will explain the situation.

It does. Mill relaxes as Drew does.

Drew squints his eyes in the brightness of the room. "Oh. Oh. _Oh_."

"Oh. Yeah...er...could you, dunno, step out for a second and I'll get right on being someone you might recognize from last night?" Mill smiles disarmingly. You lure more flies with honey than vinegar. "'Course, if you _still_ don't recognize me, then we have a problem, but..."

Drew grins. "Oh no. I remember you. But was this just a..."

"_Not_ just a kink thing." Mill interrupts before he can say anything further. "It's a daily thing, becoming a man, you know?"

Drew slowly extends his other hand and opens his fingers to reveal a vial identical to Mill's, amber color bleached by the fluorescent light over the toilet.

"Yeah, I know."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Oh." Drew's smile gets bigger.

The statistics-the increasing percentage of out, gay, FTM wizards plus the small size of Manchester's queer pub scene, plus Mill's relative strumpetdom-were bound to create this situation eventually. Mill shifts over and Drew shuffles in. They stare into the mirror, on the surface just another man and woman after a one-night stand but, as with everything, there are so many more levels. Drew leans into the mirror and inspects the top of his lip critically.

"How long have you been on the potion?" he asks, rubbing his blunt fingers over the peach fuzz below his nose.

Mill thinks back. "About...10 months?"

Drew's eyes fly up to meet his in the mirror. "It's only been out for 8!"

Mill shifts and feels the entirely foreign sensation of his boob jiggling. Ugh. "I...uh, went to school with the inventors?"

Drew jerks his chin up in a backwards nod of approval, a move that is manly in a way Mill finds attractive all over again. Drew had done it to every wizard in the club last night before Mill had dragged him outside. "Wicked. Hogwarts, right?"

Mill nods warily and Drew opens his mouth but then starts to shrink, melting smoothly into an even shorter woman with barely-there breasts and wide hips. Not fair. Why are some guys hot in either body? You could bounce a sickle off that ass.

Mill finishes his cursory perusal of Drew's birth-body. He will never understand women. Never. When he reaches Drew's face, he finds him smirking with a speculative look in his eyes.

Drew bumps his hips into Mill's and his grin gets wider. "Hey..." he starts in a high, sultry tone and Mill's stomach tenses.

"'Hey,' what."

"Dunno about how you feel about it, but while we are both, you know, looking like chicks, you want to..." he gestures between them hopefully.

"No." Mill says unequivocally.

"You sure? Opportunity of a-"

"No."

"Okay!" Drew backs his hip away from Mill and Mill thinks about the morning post-breakfast sex he will be missing out on because of his refusal to lez out. But you have to stop the gender issues somewhere and, while Mill is still ambivalent about the downsides of his new appendage, unexpected boners at the forefront of his issues, he has drawn this line at least. No fucking when he looks like a chick.

He lifts his dose of polyjuice and examines the amber liquid instead of meeting Drew's eyes in the mirror. An identical vial _clinks_ against his and Mill glances down to see Drew giving him an irrepressible grin.

"Just a question, mate. See you on the bed with your, er, not-so-little friend? Cheers." Drew downs his dose and Mill follows a second later. He watches in interest as Drew's cock re-emerges, wondering how Drew manages to keep his circumcised when it regrows everyday. Something to ask Draco.

But, you know, later. Mill's gaze follows Drew's swinging ass across the room and feels himself grow and shrink and expand and _become_ and thinks he might just call this guy back sometime.

Mill's Animagus form is his crowning achievement his last year at Hogwarts. Professor-sorry, Headmistress-McGonagall looks at him over her sharp spectacles, candlelight glinting off the lenses. They only have time to meet for Mill's tutoring late at night in her office. The phoenix is still there and has finally stopped glaring at him, 7 months into the school year.

"A hyaena, Mill?" McGonagall arches an eyebrow.

Mill avoids looking at her when he answers. "Well, they are, er, a nice mixture of habits and physical characteristics? Felinoid in bone structure, canid in face...they mark like the weasel family," Mill foresees needing to punch Draco in the face if the ferret ever discovers this fact, "but, er, they have big clans that are more like family than a hierarchy?"

"Mmm," McGonagall agrees. "But they aren't very, er, _native_ to the British Isles. Not very subtle."

"Well, no." Mill admits. "But to me, this is more about...finding another form, I guess. Something a bit less practical and a bit more, well, me."

"And a form with so many elements..." McGonagall trails off and looks over Mill's shoulder toward the darkened window. Mill wonders for the thousandth time if he should have just used Pansy's suggestion of a scrappy-yet-adorable mutt. She'd offered to find him a manly, diamond-studded collar. She meant well.

"Well," McGonagall claps her hands lightly, "I think I shall need to write away for some new bestiaries. We don't exactly specialize in hyaenidae anatomy here at Hogwarts. I'm sure we can do this together, Mill. I'll let you know when the books come in, shall I?"

Mill had politely requested that all of the professors not use a title with him. They thought it was about Mill not liking to hear his last name and be reminded of what his family did in the war. Not really. His mum was one of the most courageous women he'd ever met. Mill just has an undying hatred of the word "Miss." Mill breaks from his usual stoicism with a tiny smile and a shallow bow. "Thank-you again, Headmistress." He turns to leave, trying as always to affect the late Headmaster Snape's signature robe swirl and failing.

Hand on the doorknob, he is interrupted by a man's voice. "You know, I do believe that there's a better-known attribute of spotted hyaenas, isn't there, Mill?"

Fuck. Dumbledore. Fucking closet-case fairy who in the afterlife decides to atone by forcing everything to the light.

"...Mill?"

Mill turns around in time to see the portrait of Headmaster Snape smack a gaily (or gay-ly, Mill thinks darkly) painted Dumbledore on the back of the head, knocking his hideous hat awry. He takes a breath. This wasn't so hard the first two times, right?

"You're right."

Mill looks into the daubs of dark paint and personality in Snape's eyes pleadingly. He's a portrait and a former spy. Mill would be disappointed if Snape _didn't_ know about Mill's gender issues. Snape inclines his head a fraction of an inch and says in his smooth tones, "Yes. The female spotted hyaena is most notable for its psuedo-hermaphroditic nature. They are characterized by a large pseudo-phallus which makes them almost indistinguishable from male hyaenae upon a cursory examination, except for the female's often greater stature."

Mill finds the pattern in the stones around his scuffed loafers very fascinating.

"...Mill?" McGonagall repeats.

Mill looks up and is pleasantly surprised to not find pity but rather its better half, compassion, on her face.

Maybe coming out will get easier each time?

He shrugs awkwardly. "Like I said. Less about the practicality, more about being, er, me." A pause and Mill realizes that McGonagall will wait until he has it all out. "Like a boy. I mean. Looking like a boy. I already _am_ a boy, at heart." Mill has learned to be firm on this point. Pansy is supportive but forgetful. "Can't do much about Mill-the-Wizard yet, but being able to do _something_ would help-_is _helping, you know?"

"I understand, Mill. Or...shall I say, Mr. Bulstrode?" McGonagall offers tentatively.

Mill would like that very much, thank you. He nods jerkily.

McGonagall smiles and tents her delicate hands in front of her face. "Well then, Mr Bulstrode. You are dismissed. Remember that my office is always open to you, for any sort of transformation discussions. As always, confidentiality is a given. Good night, Mill." Mill bows again, deeper this time, and walks out, his shoulders unloaded just that much more.

Whenever Mill is insecure about his gender presentation or how he feels that day vis-a-vis his dick, he looks at his husband, and immediately is assured of his own masculinity. Just because the frilly apron with the half faded Hippogriffs had been in the pantry when he and Harry had moved in didn't mean it had to _stay_. (Except when Harry got into one of his "I'm going to cook mostly naked and wait for Mill to lose it and bugger me on the counter-top" moods. Then the apron was just a...costume).

Mill doesn't believe that cooking is an inherently feminine activity: evidence, Hermione Granger, who does beautiful things with take-away leftovers all the time. But Harry, sometimes, it seems, has three levels of queer: vaguely gay, poofy as a 3 quid coin, and Manic Domesticity Bordering On Julia Child Impersonations. Shortly after moving in with Harry in that depressing mausoleum he had the audacity to call a house, Mill had sat Harry down for a long discussion about Harry's heretofore undisclosed pleated skirt collection.

Gender norms went out the window in their most recent moving process, along with Harry's paranoid Sneakascope and Mill's not-so-insignificant gathering of Disney figurines. Relationships are about compromise.

About 4 years into their new house, 6 after their marriage next to the lake at Hogwarts, and 6 months after Harry had quit the Aurors (_finally_), Harry's wild embrace of all things Domestic and Family Oriented rears its head in an unexpected fashion.

Mill and Harry are cuddling on the sofa in the den, listening to Penelope Weasley (_nee _Clearwater) huskily sing an acoustic arrangement of "And Ever Onwards," her post-Voldemort hit which, to this day, Mill insists damply doesn't make him cry. Wands out, they are playing Merlin & Morgana, each forming an animal out of the puffy cloud of smoke emitting from his wand.

Harry waves his wand at his chicken and changes it to an eagle to counter Mill's fox and then flips over, his slight weight thudding comfortingly onto Mill's frame. Mill braces himself as Harry wriggles into a comfortable position, ever-so-accidentally grinding their pelvises together in the process.

"Hi," Harry says, warm breath and glasses so close, and Mill leans his head back into the sofa cushion and crosses his eyes to look at him.

"Hi back," Mill says softly. He drops his wand onto the carpet and reaches his now free hand under the hem of Harry's sweater. He lays his hand, big and calloused and so much his own, onto of Harry's lower back. Harry is warm and tan from puttering half-naked in the garden and shivers slightly whenever Mill's circling fingers brush one of the irresistible dimples right at the waistband of Harry's trousers.

Harry props his elbows on Mill's ribcage and looks nervous.

"Mill?"

"Harry?"

"Mill, I know we talked about this before we got married and you said you were okay with the concept and would figure out the practical aspect and Hermione and Ron already have _two_ and I love you but this is a big house and we have plenty of room for a few more to live here and I _swear_ I'll cook and clean and they won't get in your way and that you will love them too and-" Harry stops to take a breath and Mill kisses him to shut his tirade off, confused.

"Harry," he says, pulling out of the kiss. He is pleased to note that this method of distracting Harry still works; Harry's glasses are crooked and his eyes are green and dazed. "Love, what are you talking about?"

Harry colours and looks steadily at Mill's left ear instead of his eyes. "I was thinking," he starts airily, "that we might do with some noise around the house. Perhaps fill some of the rooms on the third floor."

"No more dogs." Mill says, quickly. The both turn to look at Gandalf, their basset hound, who is dozing on a braided rug by the fireplace.

"That's not what I'm talking about!" Harry says, then adopts a thoughtful expression which Mill has learned to fear. "Although, Lee's got a couple crup hybrids that need homes..."

"No. More. Dogs." One was enough. Adorable, affectionate, but damn if the dog didn't fart like the dickens.

"Right," Harry says, and Mill feels him take a deep breath, still looking steadily away from Mill's eyes. "Children?"

"Children." Mill repeats, neutral.

"Er...yes? I was thinking the other day that now would be a good time because I'm could be home for them all the time and...and I really _want_ one, or four, but-Mill?"

Mill is thinking about reading Witchylocks and the Three Muggles and One Crup, Two Crup, Red Crup, Green Crup to a tousle-headed toddler and doesn't respond immediately. Harry wriggles against him and he looks up into moss-green eyes.

"Mill? Is this ok?" Harry sounds so vulnerable.

"Of course. Of course, Harry. You know I've always wanted kids. We talked about this." Mill smooths his hand up and down the soft skin of Harry's back.

Mill feels the tension run out of Harry's body and enjoys the sensation of being pressed more firmly into the forgiving sofa cushion. Harry's smile is shy and wide and Mill _cannot wait_ to be surrounded by toddlers, children, teenagers, bursting in and out of the house, eating all the food and tripping over the kneazles he knows Harry will ask for next.

"Good." Harry says, and sinks onto Mill's body, kissing his collarbone before burrowing his head into Mill's shoulder. Mill is reminded of a park bench nearby Grimmauld Place, November and damp cold and tea in gloved hands, talking about the future. "I want a house full to eaves," Harry had said, looking at a family in yellow raincoats feed the ducks. "I want children and chickens and friends over for sleepovers and a dog and to coordinate schedules every week on a big calendar in the kitchen. I want to trip over Quidditch gear and musical instruments in the foyer."

Mill had bought a ring the next day.

"Harry," he says, and pokes him in the side. Harry squirms.

"Mmph?" Harry grunts into Mill's neck.

"How are we going to do this? Did you want to foster first?" Mill wonders whether tomorrow is too early to buy matching bed sets, just in case they end up taking in siblings. He'd always wanted a sibling, growing up.

Harry raises his head up, confused, "Foster?" he repeats.

"Yeah, foster. We can't just go to an orphanage and pick one out like we picked up Gandalf." The dog perks his ears up at the sound of his name and snuffles back into his rug when there are no further instructions.

"Orphanage?" Harry repeats. Mill decides that he will be the one to impart elocution and poise to the children.

Mill pokes Harry again. "Yes, love, orphanage. Foster. How did you think two gay guys were going to get children? I _guess_ we could surrogate, but there are so many children who need homes already." Mill thinks of the Death Eaters' children no one had wanted. Little Antony Mulciber had been passed around from family to family until he went to Hogwarts and McGonagall adopted him.

Harry is scrambling up and squishing important organs in the process. Mill grunts and in a tangle of legs and arms and warm cotton they end up sitting right-ways up on the sofa, facing each other. "Why can't we have one of our own?" Harry asks, petulant.

Mill raises his eyebrows at Harry. "Again, two gay guys? Not a lot of wombs in this house. Even the dog is a guy." Gandalf ears perk forward again before flopping back. Mill sometimes thought that, for a Muggle dog, Gandalf was just a little _too_ smart.

"_You _could have one. You could have a baby." Harry blurts.

Mill stares at him. "I'm a _guy_, Harry. Guys don't give birth to babies. It's like, one of the definitions, right along with the dick and not stopping for Apparation coordinates."

"But. But think about it! You're not _really_ a-"

Mill recoils back into the far side of the sofa. "Don't..." But Harry barrels on.

"But, er, I mean, you _are_, a guy, you know. A man. Very much a man. But, I mean, not all the time? Like, every morning you're a woman. A handsome woman! Er, and I was thinking that, maybe, you could..." Harry waves his hand like a conductor of an orchestra towards Mill's abdomen.

Mill is pretty chill, most of the time. Maybe he has too many feelings sometimes and maybe he sometimes has problems with anger that he takes out at the gym, but he tries to keep an even keel. But Harry _married _him, for fuck's sake. Harry married _him_. They are both gay. This was discussed. Mill's voice is Slytherin cool and whisper angry, "Could what, Harry? Become something I'm not?"

"But, I mean," Harry fumbles for words. "But I thought you wanted kids?" he asks hopefully, cluelessly, and Mill stands up and heads for the stairs because how can Harry be this dense? "Where are you going? Mill? Mill?"

"Upstairs. I'll come back down when you remember who you married, and his name isn't Millicent and I thought you understood this. Me." The stairs are very loud under his feet because Harry won't put anything in the cupboard below and their room is red and gold because Harry feels like those colours mean home, even if Mill had explicitly stated that he prefers calming blues and whites in the bedroom, crisp and airy. The only thing that's all for Mill is his time in the bathroom every morning and his study overlooking the backyard.

Mill perches on their bed before rising, agitated, to pace in front of the window overlooking the blackened trees, rustling in the early autumn breeze outside. The moon is bright tonight and so is Mars. Mill had mostly used Astronomy to smoke fags and listen to Draco bitch about his home life. He contemplates flooing Draco to rant because, despite his arrogance and awkward place in his and Harry's marriage as a mutual drunken hookup, Draco deals with so many trans witches and wizards in his work that none of this will faze him and right now Mill would like to not feel any more like a freak.

Merlin. Mill thought this was all over and done with. He's a man, now. He does man things. He and Greg meet for a pint every other week and grunt at each other for two hours. He's settled, with a husband who likes him for him, big and taciturn and hairy as he is. This _should not_ be bothering him.

How could Harry think that Mill would, what, just stop taking his potions everyday? It would be at least 6 months before he would be-Mill shudders-fertile again, and then another possibly 4 months to actually conceive, 9 for the actual pregnancy, a couple years afterward for breast milk (because there were some awful reports coming in about the imported Muggle concept of baby formula), and at that point, why did he transition in the first place?

Even on his most comfortable days before the potion, Mill had never tried to think about "down there." If it were a void, it wasn't there and he didn't have to worry about it. On his bad days before the potion, Mill had curled up in bed for hours and stared at the curtains around his bed and tried not to crawl out of his skin.

His favorite stories growing up were imparted to him by his battle-axe of a grandmother. She told him about mermaids sinking ships of hapless Muggles and about dragons and airplanes, which are still, to Mill, a special kind of magic. But Mill's favorite was her tale of the Selkie who fell in love with a fisherman. Mill begged her to tell it over and over again. How the Selkie, in shedding her seal skin, became fully human and found love.

Mill, looking out the window in his home, remembers what he always forgot about the Selkie story. The Selkie was never fully human. Never fully shed her sea-bound skin, always called back to the water at the most inconvenient times. Pansy had thought that part was tragically romantic; Mill still wonders why the story prized the freedom of the sea over love, stability, being yourself, finally settling like wagon wheels into the tracks at the beginning of a journey.

He doesn't want to be "the pregnant man." He doesn't want to be another test subject for Draco's sometimes creepy fascination with all things trans. He doesn't want people looking at him on the street, his bulk and gait all wrong for someone with a baby growing inside them. He wants to be a boring married couple with Harry with kids who know that their parents are normal and dependable. If he has his druthers, he probably won't tell the kids that Mill used to be short for something. Mill would like to be a normal guy, thanks.

He's startled when he feels Harry's wiry arms wrap around his hips and Harry's chin dig into his back.

"M'sorry," Harry says into Mill's sweater, squeezing Mill around the middle.

"Mmm?" Mill grunts noncommittally.

"Wecanadopt," and the squeezing gets tighter. "I was wrong."

Mill disentangles himself from Harry's arms and turns to look down at Harry, whose face is blotched and red. Harry cries a lot now, having abandoned his teenaged stoicism. Usually, Mill is all behind _someone_ in their marriage talking about what he feels, but Harry crying has always been Mill's undoing.

"Hey. Hey, four-eyes. Stop crying." No matter how pissed he is about Harry's assumption about his gender's fluidity-and really, when _had_ Harry even bothered to look up further information about trans issues in their entire marriage, or asked Mill more about any of his feelings on the subject-he still can't stand it when Harry gets all weepy.

Harry hiccups and sniffles. Oh, Merlin. Mill folds his arms around Harry and murmurs a purposely indistinguishable questioning noise into the top of Harry's head.

"I said I'm sorry!" Harry says, a little more loud than might be called for, but Mill has learned that Harry has two volumes: normal and panicked/angry.

"Why?" Mill says. Sometime in his time working for the Ministry, Harry picked up the very Slytherin method of being sorry for offending people but not for what he actually said. Usually it's endearing.

Usually.

"I'm sorry for making you sad," Harry says. Yes. Like that. Mill sighs into Harry's hair.

"I'm not sad, Harry, I'm angry."

"Yeah. That too. I'm sorry I made you angry." Harry recites. Mill and Harry are not so good at the deep conversations and sometimes they have to follow a script that Hermione made copies of and left in their respective desks and briefcases.

"Why am I angry, Harry?" Mill asks conversationally, continuing the script.

"Because, er, because you are a man?" Harry asks back.

Mill leans back to raise an eyebrow at him. "I think you would have figured that out by now, Potter."

Harry grins damply. "Hah. Yeah..." He trails off, looking back at Mill's shirt.

"Why else?" Mill hates the person who ever introduced Hermione Granger-Weasley to conflict resolution and the Socratic method, but if they don't hash this all out tonight, this will be a repeat of the Silent April of 2004 when he and Harry spoke a cumulative 23 words to each other, 20 about the dog and 3 little ones to end the silence.

"Because...er..." Harry is not very good at seeing both sides of problem.

Mill steers Harry toward the bed and he sits upon it, looking up at Mill. "I am mostly angry because you _assumed, _Harry, that I would put my gender after your desire to have biological children."

"But you always talk about wanting kids with my eyes!" Harry interrupts.

"Yeah, but Harry, I also talk about wanting kids that can all play Quidditch and be good at Arithmancy. Those are just wishes. I don't care if they don't look like me at all. Or you. I just want them, and this is how I can see getting them without compromising fundamental parts of myself."

Harry looks at him with dawning comprehension. "This means that much to you?"

Mill nods. He doesn't really understand the look on Harry's face, a mixture of determination and resolve and love, because no one has looked at him like that before, even this far into their marriage. So he blathers out, "Yes. Er, I mean, it does. I am. A man. Definitely. We've talked about this."

He stops when he feels Harry put a warm hand on his elbow. "No," Harry says, "We haven't. Not really." Harry peers closer at him and Mill feels more exposed than that time he mistimed a potion dose and melted into a woman at the beach. So many memory-charms on small children. "You don't really like to talk about your gender, Mill, and, because sometimes I do have some tact, I don't ask about it."

Mill shrugs. Usually the waving the potion around does the trick, or saying that he's a transwizard, so he doesn't feel the need to _open up_ as much as Harry might want.

"...Mill?" Harry asks, hesitant.

Mill looks around at their bedroom and the pictures on the dresser from nearly 8 years of a life together and thinks about how awful it was to hear about Pansy's miscarriages after the fact, because it's those you love whose pain is worst when kept secret. He shifts from wide foot to wide foot and the floor creaks. He looks anywhere but Harry's face, so trusting and _always present_, because what if he blurts out everything he's ever felt about being born in the wrong body and Harry leaves?

"Mill?" Harry repeats, and the dam inside Mill breaks open.

"I'm a man, Harry. That's what I am. That's what you are. Before we have magic, before we have names, before we are Quidditch players or Potions Masters or husbands or wives or parents or lovers or queer or straight, we are a gender. As least, that's how I see it. It's so much a part of us that most people just, don't think about about it. If asked you what kind of person you are, you would say, 'I am a husband and guy who wears ugly sweaters and a Gryffindor.' I would say, 'I am a _man_ who is a husband and...' and anyway, you were born right so you don't think about it. Draco didn't understand what Muggles were until he was 7. Magic was just so much a part of his world that it was impossible for him to conceive of a person unable to flick a wand and make light appear."

Mill takes a shuddering breath because he just _doesn't talk about this_ but Harry is actually listening, so maybe Mill will only ever have to say this once.

"I wasn't born as a man. I had to work at it. I had to learn how to walk differently, cross my legs differently, do almost everything at least not like a girl so that I might finally pass as a man and feel like everyone and everything matched up with how my head and heart felt it to be. Any little bit helped. My Animagus form helped. The potion helped. Spending my post-Hogwarts years fucking anonymous men every other night helped. So yeah, when you assumed that I would just go _backwards_ and...and...and undo all that work and years of feeling like my skin didn't fit and that being dead would be better than getting my period it just..." Mill pauses and scrubs a hand across his eyes. "Fuck, Harry. It _hurt_, okay? Is that you want to hear? It hurt. I hurt. I am a man and that's something that's been a struggle so I can't just cavalierly throw it off like I didn't-"

Oh, fuck it. Mill can't do stoic and independent all the time. He collapses next to Harry on the bed and leans awkwardly on Harry's shoulder. Harry's arms immediately come to steady him in a hug and Mill feels his hand begin soothing circles on Mill's back. He's trying so hard not to cry, because _men don't cry_. He takes a big gasping, shuddering, _girly_ breath and hates himself all over again. Men are strong. Men hold their emotions in while the people in their arms fall apart, again and again and fucking again.

Mill is so tired of that part of being a man.

"M'sorry, Harry," he says, snuffling into Harry's neck. "I'll stop crying. I swear."

Harry's arms tighten around him. "Shhh...no. Mill. Please cry. If you want to. There's nothing wrong with that. C'mon," he takes up a joking tone, "throw a tantrum. Right here. Sob until you fall asleep. Leave snot all over the duvet cover."

Mill gives a half-hysterical giggle and speaks into Harry's neck, "S'not manly. Crying."

He feels Harry's shoulders move up and down in laughter. "Not manly? What am I, then, Mill? I cry when the Celestia Warbeck cover songs come on the radio. I sobbed all the way through Planet Earth. I still have nightmares about the lonely polar bears. Crying is a man thing, too. Don't let the girls have all the fun."

Mill huffs in begrudging laughter and lifts his head up. Harry kisses him, soft and sweet. Mill conjures a handkerchief and wipes his face of the gunk his emotional whirlwind has expelled, tears and snot and the dirt on feelings long submerged.

He _evanescos_ the handkerchief and kisses Harry back. "Thanks," he says softly.

Harry's hand reaches up and runs along Mill's cheek. "Anytime," Harry says, and kisses him again. Mill holds on this time and deepens their embrace. Harry takes this opportunity, as always, to maneuver himself into straddling Mill's hips. Mill grabs at Harry's ass to steady him, supposedly, and this is turning into a pretty typical night in the Potter-Bulstrode household. Mill is about to flip them over to continue the evening when a thought occurs.

"Adopting, yeah?"

"Of course," Harry breathes back. "Tomorrow. Next Friday. Sometime soon. Love you."

Mill grunts something like "Love" or maybe "Dove" or maybe "Glove" into Harry's neck and mouths Harry's collarbone just to make sure Harry understands his meaning. He flips them over and begins the arduous process of divesting Harry of his shirt-Harry is a wriggler.

He and Harry almost knock heads as Mill heads back up to kiss Harry some more and Harry leans his head up.

Mill can feel Harry's smile on his cheek as Harry leans in to whisper in his ear, "I promise not to knock you up if you promise not to leave without a note, darling."

Mill leans back to look at Harry, who is grinning saucily and that _does _it. Mill grabs Harry's hands and presses them above his head on the pillow. He bends down and deliberately thrusts his hips onto Harry's crotch. "You won't be able to _walk_ tomorrow, Harry, so I wouldn't worry about knocking _me_ up, if you get what I mean."

Harry grins.

Mill will have a herd of kids running about hopefully sometimes before Yule; his investments are going well; he has a flexible husband in his bed; and he feels a touch lighter than when he woke up and took his potion. Mill Bulstrode is a well-adjusted man, whatever that means.


End file.
